He who is not courageous enough to take risks will accomplish nothing in life.
Muhammad Ali (1942- ), world champion heavyweight boxer
Do you remember a time in your life, perhaps long ago in your youth, when your heart was full of dreams and aspirations for the future? Are those feelings only a distant memory, or have you maintained an active focus over the years to seek and attain your goals in your professional and personal life?
THE FUTURE STARTS TODAY
Life is not a dress rehearsal. Now-right now-is the time to get serious (and also adventurous and excited) and take the necessary steps to create and nurture the purposeful future you may have wished for, but may also have neglected working toward.
Remember that your future is precisely that: yours and yours alone. You are the only one who can make the right decisions for the rest of your life by examining your accomplishments, needs, values, and goals closely and then acting on them. You will certainly want to consult with and be considerate of the needs and goals of the people around you who are important in your life. But ultimately, as I learned when I made the move from banking to consulting in my own career, your career is your responsibility.
All of us are unique in terms of our ability to cope with change, face new challenges, and make good and meaningful decisions. As mature individuals, we have accumulated wide-ranging experiences throughout our lives, both professionally and personally. By examining and assessing all the knowledge that experience provides us, we possess the necessary resources to make effective decisions about the future.
It can be difficult, however, to assimilate this information, standing back from the day-to-day world, and determining a proper course for the future. This chapter will help you chart that course.
Case Study: A Matter of Personal Choice
Fred recently turned fifty-seven years old. He had left school at a young age to take a job in a local bank branch. He worked hard and was promoted rapidly through the ranks of the bank and undertook additional studies to further his career.
Fred's career continued to advance, which resulted in a good standard of living for him and his family. He managed to avoid any dramatic changes in his life on the road to prosperity, career development, raising a family, and building assets. Fred has now achieved financial security in the way of savings, equity in his home, and other investments. His children have been well educated and have moved away from home to live their lives independently.
Over the past thirty or so years, Fred has worked for several organizations but has always been extremely focused on working hard to achieve and maintain a decent standard of living for his family. His focus on leisure activities throughout this time has been limited to annual vacations and some athletic pursuits.
Fred's employer has recently undergone a number of internal structural changes due to a recent takeover. As a result, Fred recognizes the possibility of losing his job. He is faced with the need to contemplate his future and his eventual retirement.
Fred thinks in terms of three primary considerations:
Remain active and continue to develop in the corporate world to pursue greater achievements for as long as he is physically and mentally capable.
Maintain the traditional career path of working through to age sixty-five or thereabouts and then move into retirement.
Retire early in the event of a forced retirement.
The key for Fred is to pursue the path that will be most fulfilling for him personally. His challenge is to decide on the most desirable option, which will allow him to achieve and maintain his ideal work-life balance. Only he, with the support of his wife, can decide what is right for him at this stage in his life. Fred's decision is unique and very personal.
WHAT ARE YOUR CHOICES?
As Fred has learned, determining the right choice for your future can usually be narrowed down to three choices:
1. Continue to work hard to achieve further career goals because you enjoy your work and gain great satisfaction from what you are doing. If others brand you a workaholic, so what? It's your life, and if you're enjoying it and have a sense of achievement and are maintaining good health, that's fine. Do be sure, however, to give yourself regular breaks to recharge your batteries and pursue other interests away from work. A better term for you, because you enjoy what you do, may be a workaphile. 2. Maintain your working life at a steady, enjoyable pace, without working long hours. This choice allows time for personal and social interests on a regular basis in the context of a routine work life with regular hours. If others suggest that you ought to be working harder, so what? It's your life. You may plan to continue in this vein until your normal retirement date.
3. Decide to stop working. If you don't enjoy your work role and have reached the point where you have some financial security, you may want to say good-bye to work. If others say you're too young to retire, so what? It's your life. You may have hobbies and other pursuits that you want to enjoy. You may simply want to take life a little easier.
Which is the right course of action for you? All are good choices. There are no right or wrong answers, as long as you have thought through the alternatives and decided which one is right for you. The key is to be satisfied that you will enjoy what you do and will be pleasing yourself, not satisfying other people's wishes.
Note, however, that the first two broad options, which focus on continuing your career, are not necessarily tied to your current job or even the industry or area in which you work today. It is possible to start a new career at age fifty, sixty, or any other age, for that matter, if you realize that making a change will reinvigorate you personally as well as professionally.
BETTER HEALTH + LONGER LIFE = MORE CHOICES
Today, most people enjoy better health than at any other time in the world's history, possess greater financial resources, and have broader retirement options, including the choice to retire at a later age or-at least in the traditional sense of retirement-not at all.
One of the most significant changes in recent history is the continuing increase in life expectancy. Advances in medicine and health practices have helped double the average life span of Americans in the past two hundred years (Butler, 2000). Life spans vary throughout the world, of course, depending on medical advances and services available, environmental conditions, genes, and other factors that determine the range of aging. Still, the maximum attainable life span for humans is currently thought to be in the vicinity of 120 years. This is encouraging and perhaps daunting news: time may no longer be the scarce resource when middle-aged individuals consider their futures.
Making a Choice. _____________________________________________________________________________
Consider the following questions when determining whether to continue working hard, ease up some, or retire:
List the three things you enjoy most in your life (work related or nonwork related). __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________
If you gave up work or reduced your current income, have you adequate funds to enjoy your desired standard of living until you are eighty-five years old? __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________
Do you have fun each day? __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________
Do you have good business and personal relationships? __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________
Do you make a difference in your job? __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________
Do you have time to see your friends and family as often as you would like? __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________
Think what you would like to achieve over the next five years. Have you the time, money, and energy to achieve those goals? __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________
If you have children or grandchildren, do you spend enough time with them? Remember, with children, you only have a loan of them until they grow up, so don't think you can defer spending time with them for five years. __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________
If you have a spouse or partner and you changed how you spend each day, what would be the impact on that person? __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________
In the industrialized nations of Western Europe and North America, expanding life spans and contracting birthrates have introduced the well-publicized phenomenon of an aging population. Among the world's larger countries, Italy, for example, stands out as the most "aged" society, with 23 percent of its populace aged sixty or older. Countries in East and Southeast Asia are also aging rapidly. With 22 percent of its population age sixty or older, Japan currently is the "oldest" of all Asian nations (West & Kinsella, 1999).
DEALING WITH STRESS
It is no secret that working too hard can induce stress. What may be less well known is that boredom or a lack of direction in life can also bring on stress.
You may have experienced times in your life when you were bored from being too idle and found yourself focusing far too much on small issues, believing that they were in fact vital issues and had to be addressed urgently. I think we all know friends, relatives, or associates who seem to prefer dwelling on the negatives rather than the positives and spend their time feeling stressed about matters that most of us would deem trivial. This particular type of stress is indeed unhealthy and can be harmful to our well-being.
Be sure to maintain your health and fitness. Often, the fitter we become, the more resilient we are to stressful situations. Those of us who have a competitive spirit and enjoy the challenge of achieving goals, whether at work or play, often experience a type of stress while striving to accomplish these goals. There's no evidence, to my knowledge, that this particular type of stress is unhealthy. But to plan for the future, you need to control the stress you are willing to accept.
Identifying the path you want to follow to fulfill your dreams and maintain a satisfying work-life balance can go a long way toward removing stress from your life.
YOU DON'T HAVE TO RETIRE
If you are physically and mentally capable, you don't have to retire at all, regardless of your chronological age. The great news is the traditional rules of retirement no longer apply. If you think that such rules remain in place, now is a good time to break them. I have friends in their seventies who, continuing to balance their life choices, are working full time not because they have to work but because they want to.
Attaining a comfortable financial position is obviously a common goal to provide freedom to pursue different activities and alleviate financial stress and strain. But although there's no denying that it does have its benefits, money is not a goal for everyone. What you need to determine is whether you have the necessary financial resources to live a comfortable life-as you define it-while considering the fact that your life expectancy may be eighty or ninety years or even more.
Once again, this is all a question of what matters to you. How can you achieve your goals and fulfill the balance you desire in both your professional and personal life? Many people have no choice but to continue working because of financial needs, whether to pay the mortgage on their house (or pay rent), to educate their children, or to pay off debts.
But many other people, particularly those over age fifty who have worked hard over the years, have significant financial resources: retirement funds, investments, and an accumulation of assets that provide them with the freedom of choice. Financial well-being is not reflected by a hard and fast number, of course. For many, if not most of us, extreme wealth is not a prerequisite for a sense of personal and financial satisfaction. Additional earnings may not dramatically add to the true quality of your life.
So how do you make an effective choice between continuing to work
or retiring? On the one hand, you can assess whether the benefits of continued
employment are worth the pressures that may accompany them: extensive
business travel requirements, keeping up with changing technology,
constant decision making, or ongoing performance pressures, for example.
Continues...
Excerpted from Rewired, Rehired, or Retired? by Robert K. Critchley Excerpted by permission.
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